Office XP slowness and export issues...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom McNally
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Tom McNally

We recently migrated a number of databases from Office 97 to Office XP. The
applications were originally written in Office 97, and I used the wizard to
convert them (all recordset and database objects are DAO and specified as
such in VB). Outside of the usual new references added during or because of
the conversion, the databases on the whole seem to be much more sluggish
than in the past. For examp, when I view a table from the database window,
seems to take about 3-5 seconds to open, regardless of if the table has 10
rows or 50K! Queries on the other hand open almost instantaneously (assume
Jet has a lot to do with it). On faster machines (P4s or Athalon XPs) with
at least 512M of memory, the delay is unnoticeable, but most of the machines
my client and our development team use unfortunately are PIIIs with 256M
memory. I suspect XP Office has a lot of overhead. In 97 opening raw table
views were much faster. Needless to say, users are getting annoyed. The
OSs are now all XP Professional, with all latest SP applied both for
OfficeXP and XP Pro.

Also, stored, complex queries that were used for exporting data to Excel
often will have the "Export" option greyed-out. So we have to create a
maketable query, save the damn thing and then export the table. Why would
this be so? Office 97 and Office 2K didn't pose this issue ever.

Have been using Access for about 10 years and would like to know what the
new memory requirements are so I can offer some realistic advice to my
client (and our lame, cheap IT dept!). Would upping the memory on the boxes
to 512M dramatically improve responsiveness, or is it back to new processor
+ memory + motherboard + disk access speed (ie, a new updated PC?)
I suspect the latter, but budgets are tight for new boxes. Memory is still
cheap, time isn't, however.

Thanks!

Tom
 
Thanks, Tony. I'll try some of the suggestions and see if that helps. I
tried importing to a fresh database, but didn't try a decompile. I don't
notice the sluggishness with a faster PC, though.

At present, most of these databases aren't split; am trying to promote this
concept but it's rare that more than one person is using them for data entry
(they are mainly reporting databases with ODBC links to Sybase tables).


Tony Toews said:
Tom McNally said:
We recently migrated a number of databases from Office 97 to Office XP. The
applications were originally written in Office 97, and I used the wizard to
convert them (all recordset and database objects are DAO and specified as
such in VB). Outside of the usual new references added during or because of
the conversion, the databases on the whole seem to be much more sluggish
than in the past.

The three most common performance problems in Access 2000 and 2002
are:
- LDB locking which a persistent recordset connection or an always
open bound form corrects (multiple users)
- sub datasheet Name property set to [Auto] should be [None]
- Track name AutoCorrect should be off

If the problem is for everyone when starting up the MDB then it likely
needs a decompile.

For more information on these, less likely causes, other tips and
links to MS KB articles visit my Access Performance FAQ page at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/performancefaq.htm

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
 
I replied to your earlier message without reading the whole thing through.
It's not a network or split database issue; definitely a hardware issue.
Only affects slower P3 class machines with 256M or less memory. Why a
simple table should take 5 secs to open, with only 10 rows and 5 fields, is
beyond me (no relationship model, either). Seems to do this on all the
databases regardless of size, in Access 2002.
 
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